


Chasing Cars

by Elvendork



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Prompt Fic, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-08
Updated: 2011-11-08
Packaged: 2017-10-25 20:44:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elvendork/pseuds/Elvendork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Those three words, are said too much; they're not enough...</i></p><p>Five times Douglas said 'I love you' without really meaning it, and one time he completely, wholeheartedly did. For a prompt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer:** I do not own Cabin Pressure or the Snow Patrol song "Chasing Cars", which this fic takes its name from.

The first time Douglas says I love you, says it like _that_ , he is twelve years old; she is fourteen. It’s for a dare, because the other boys don’t think he has the nerve to do it, and he’s never been able to resist a challenge.  
   
As he approaches her (a stranger really, though he has seen her face before; chosen simply because she is standing on her own) his palms are sweating. His heart flutters nervously, but he presses ahead. She is slightly taller than him, and she raises a quizzical eyebrow as he steps up to her.  
   
‘I just thought you should know; I love you,’ he announces, boldly and clearly without as much as an introductory ‘hello’. He lingers just long enough to see her face flush with confusion, embarrassment and amusement all at once, before he turns away. He grins at his sniggering friends, and flashes a celebratory thumbs up while they clap and wolf-whistle as he swaggers away without a backward glance.  
   
It’s the beginning of something of a trend.


	2. Chapter 2

Over the next few years Douglas might use that phrase several times, might even mean it once or twice, but there are no occasions that stand out in particular until one night shortly after his seventeenth birthday. The girl’s name is Tricia, or Tania. Or possible Charlotte. If he ever knows it in the first place, he will forget it very soon.  
   
She has dark hair; or perhaps blonde, he won’t be sure when he looks back, though it seems so vibrant now. Her eyes are definitely either blue or green, and he will always recall that when she smiles, one crinkles more than the other.  
   
He will remember that her car is black, and that the petrol gauge is broken, which is why they end up stranded by the side of the road instead of at the cinema. The cigarette burn on the passenger seat will stick in his mind, but he will never be able to say why. He will remember that her hair (perhaps red?) is soft, and her tongue ( _definitely_ red) is warm, and that her nails are ragged and short, painted with chipped silver polish, and that her laugh is actually rather irritating.  
   
He will remember whispering _I love you_ , and he will remember that neither of them care that he doesn’t mean it.


	3. Chapter 3

She has his bag. He’s not sure why that’s the first thing that runs through his mind, but it is. Her things inside it of course and nothing else even of shared possession taken, except that one bag. It’s dark blue. It still has a tag on it from the shop. She holds it in her left hand, car keys in the right, which she taps against her leg.  
   
It’s the details he’ll remember this time. All of them, from the stray wisp of mousy hair across her eye to the fact that she breaks a nail taking the key ring he gave her off the loop. There’s nothing angry in the gesture; it’s symbolic more than anything, he suspects; especially since she has his bag.  
   
‘I’m sorry, Douglas,’ she says, and he can put it off no longer. He looks at her face; there is genuine apology there, but also quiet determination, and sadness but no regret.  
   
‘Stay,’ says Douglas – again. He doesn’t know how many times he has said it, and even less whether he only wants her to because he can’t fathom the thought of being divorced at twenty six. He supposes that question must answer itself.  
   
‘No,’ she replies simply, quietly. ‘We’ve been through this.’  
   
‘We can make it work –’  
   
‘We could,’ she interrupts, ‘but we won’t.’  
   
‘Why not?’  
   
‘Because neither of us wants it enough,’  
   
‘I love you,’ he tries. He still can’t quite believe this is happening. There have been no fights, no screaming rows, no… _anything_. They’ve just sort of…faded. The embers of their marriage have died slowly, so that the wood is still hot long after the fire has gone out, and it’s taken them this long to notice its absence. He would have preferred it if they had ended with a bang, rather than this pathetic whimper.  
   
‘You did once,’ she says, and her voice is much calmer than his, which he hates, though he can’t seem to summon the will to be angry. ‘And I used to feel that same about you.’  
   
She kisses him on the cheek before she leaves.


	4. Chapter 4

Douglas isn’t sure how this one starts, and finds the fact unnerving. Or probably more accurately, he doesn’t know how it got this far without his realising. However it began, three months later they are still together – even though Douglas is quite certain he never specified them as being _together_ in the first place.  
   
They were both angry and alone, both craving – _anything_ , really, anything but whatever mess they’d found themselves in at the time. Douglas was fresh from his second divorce. Anthony was…Douglas never really knows. Wandering; searching, he says, which Douglas takes to mean that it’s none of his business, and even if Anthony knew himself, he wouldn’t be telling.  
   
Douglas is comfortable, he has to admit. He enjoys the stability of a familiar face to come home to, because somehow Anthony has been staying over more and more often recently, even though he’s never officially moved in. If Douglas remembers rightly, his second marriage – though perhaps not the best ballpark measure of success – started out something like this. He has at least learned one thing over the years and that is that he isn’t built for being alone.  
   
Nevertheless, he is unprepared for Anthony to smile and murmur ‘you know I love you, right Douglas?’ against his neck, almost a week after their three-month anniversary, which neither of them even acknowledged.  
   
‘I love you, too,’ Douglas replies automatically, but the words sound hollow even before they’ve been spoken.  
   
Anthony moves out three days later.


	5. Chapter 5

Douglas is certain this time; certain that he means it. Helena is the _one_ , no matter his previous mistakes along the way; he knows that he loves Helena. He does. He does. If practice makes perfect, then he must be faultless by now, and Helena is the proof.  
   
Their marriage lacks the whirlwind passion of his first, the flare of a couple barely out of their teens and by their own reckoning completely invincible. But that’s okay; what good did that do them in the end, anyway?  
   
They didn’t start dating – and yes, _dating_ , this time, they started properly – until several months after Anthony’s departure, which is more than can be said for the gap between his first wife leaving and the second arriving. Surely that is a point in their favour?  
   
Helena thinks he is simply _terrific_ , a definite improvement on the First, and the feeling is heartily mutual; one up on the Second.  
   
Whichever way he looks at it, this one, _this one_ , is bound to last.  
   
Until it doesn’t. Until neither of them are what the other thought, neither of them married the person they imagined they did – until he discovers he has loved a stranger, or worse, a woman who never existed in the first place. At the very least, a woman who is already someone else’s long before the marriage ring has even left her finger.  
   
‘I love you,’ he whispers into the empty house, but somehow he can’t manage to conjure up an image of Helena’s face to match, which doesn’t waver and dissipate before he can finish the sentence.


	6. Chapter 6

This…thing, this whatever-it-is with Martin, started on the strict, though somewhat implicit, mutual understanding that it was not and would not become anything resembling _serious_. A bit of fun; comfort and company, nothing more; nothing _real_.  
   
Oh, Douglas should have known better. Should have learned after last time, or times, should have seen this _coming_.  
   
The worst part is that it was his damned idea in the first place, _his_ proposition, and he _should. Have. Known. Better_. Martin is naïve, inexperienced; he had no way of knowing how things would end up. Douglas has done this before. Douglas _remembers_ what happens; he doesn’t even have to work it out. Somebody always ends up getting hurt.  
   
If he is honest, he just didn’t expect it to be him this time.  
   
God, after all that persuasion, all those assurances, everything it had taken to convince Martin that this really was a good idea after all… _Douglas_ is the one who can’t handle it.  
   
And after all the times he’s failed; every single time the lack of feeling has been on his part…why does it have to be the reverse _now_?  
   
Martin shifts in his sleep; Douglas feels the mattress move and watches the dark shape beside him turn over, so that Martin is laid on his back. Douglas, propped up on his elbow, finds himself staring at the closed eyes of his Captain – he can’t help thinking the possessive pronoun though he would never say it aloud – and feels a painful lurch in his chest as a part of him wills them to open, so that Martin will hear what he is about to say. Another, stronger part, prays they stay closed and that Martin will never know.  
   
‘I know I’m not supposed to,’ he whispers, because if he doesn’t let the words out he thinks he might actually burst and he _hates_ himself for it. He cups one hand gently around Martin’s jaw and rubs his thumb across his cheek. ‘And believe me, I don’t want to,’ he sighs. _How did this happen_?  
   
‘But I love you.’  
   
He has never meant anything more in his life.


End file.
